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Rest in peace, Cubs fans: there's a place for you

'Beyond the Vines' will have 'eternal skyboxes' for the dead

Over at Wrigley, the Cubs aren’t saying much. Team spokesman Peter Chase said in an e-mail that nobody connected with the team had heard of the wall or wanted to talk about it.

A longtime Cubs fan himself, Mascari hopes the team likes the idea, if for no other reason it might prompt fans to head to his wall and not Wrigley with dead fans’ ashes.

But since there won’t be a Cubs logo on the wall and the company that makes the urns is already licensed to do so by Major League Baseball, he doesn’t think the Cubs can stop the wall if they wanted to.

One man who is talking about it is Philip Roux, the superintendent at the cemetery.

“I think this is great, the best publicity a cemetery could have,” said Philip Roux, Bohemian’s superintendent.

For one thing, he said it would remind people that the cemetery perhaps best known for being the final resting place for Anton Cermak, the Chicago mayor who was assassinated by a man aiming for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, is still open.

“We have space available,” Roux said.

The big test will, of course, be convincing Cubs fans their remains belong in the friendly confines of Bohemian National Cemetery.

Out at Wrigley, where the Cubs were playing this week, fans’ opinions varied. Some said they hated the idea. Others said they liked it but wouldn’t want their remains to be alone and they just couldn’t imagine their family members joining them.

Steve Kopetsky, a 53-year-old fan who lives in Corte Madera, Calif., said he didn’t have a problem with spending the money to reserve a spot on the wall as much as he did if word got out that he’d done so.

“My wife would kill me,” he said.

But Don Rood, a 31-year-old Chicagoan who wore his “Die-Hard Cub Fan” shirt to the game, said it makes perfect sense.

“What else are you going to do, lay in a box next to loved ones?” he asked. “It would symbolize what your passion is, what you enjoyed about your life.”

© 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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